Tramping

(Just to let you know tramping means hiking, I had no idea what tramping meant when I first heard the word)

So this past week was quite an experience. We all went hiking for about 3 days across Mt. Somer. We had to pack as little as possible and it was probably the lightest I’ve ever packed in my life. We set off shortly after breakfast on the first day to drive to the point where we were starting. We drove to one area, but found it teeming with a large touristy hiking group so we decided to turn around and do the planned route backwards.

When we begun I thought I couldn’t go on about 15 minutes into it, it was so hard at the beginning! We were climbing straight up for so long. It was really good though, we were separated into two groups to hike up the mountain because Peter Bichan says from experience you can get there faster in smaller groups. Peter Bichan is the ABS leader at Monvale, so he runs an Adventure-based Bible School, which is a 6 week program that runs so many times a year. I’m going to be doing an ABS in April sometime, so I can expect a lot of hiking, camping and whatnot from that. This was probably a very small dose of what I’ll be doing in April.

The hike overall was good, at times it was quite difficult but it was a really good experience. On the second day all the girls went swimming in this lovely area we found called Emerald Pool. It was this small pool which was connected to this river by a tiny waterfall at the bottom of this mountain. It was really cold at first, but quite refreshing. After that all the girls went to a place called the Water Caves. It was amazing. Amber and I went inside the caves and began to climb higher and higher throughout this network of rocks and waterfalls all enclosed in the walls of the earth around us. It was like a playground and we climbed until we couldn’t go any higher.

Peter also taught us through the book of Philippians while we were on the hike, at various points we would just stop and learn somewhere. That night though, we all went up to this high area overlooking Emerald Pool. We talked about what God had been teaching us in our lives lately and sang worship. It was a beautiful time to just reflect and be in God’s presence in the beauty of his creation.

This trip was a time in which all we had were the bare essentials, God and each other. There were no distractions from Him those few days; normally we can barely hear our own voice among everyone else let alone God’s. So for that reason alone it was nice to have time to just solely focus on Him.